Monday, January 23, 2012

Virginia Received 28239 Applications to Class of 2016

The University offered admission to 3,187 early action applicants
Friday, or about 27 percent of all early applicants, in its first year
offering a non-binding early admission option.
Early action
applications made up about 41 percent of the record-breaking 28,239
total applications the University received this year, an 18 percent
increase from last year’s number.
Dean of Admissions Greg Roberts
said in an email that the University’s early action plan, as well as the
University’s increased recruitment and outreach efforts, contributed to
the surge in applications.
Through early action, applicants who
applied by the Nov. 1 deadline will be informed by Jan. 31 whether they
were accepted, deferred to the regular application pool or declined
admission. The students who were accepted to the University were already
notified last week.
Some 3,150 applicants were deferred to the
regular application cycle and 4,909 applicants were declined admission.
The enrollment goal for the Class of 2016 is 3,360, according to a
University press release.
“The goal [of offering an early action
option] was to provide the most flexible early admission option possible
for high school students,” Roberts said.
Unlike the early
decision option, which the University discontinued in 2006, early action
is nonbinding. Applicants have until May 1 to commit, which affords
students the chance to compare financial aid offers from other schools.
Students
who apply early action undergo the same review process as those
applying regular decision and have no greater chance of admission,
Roberts said.
“We simply took the most impressive and deserving
applicants in the pool,” he said. “We did not have a target or quota
that drove our decisions.”
Of those offered admission, the average
SAT score was 2,119 on a 2,400-point scale, up 53 points from the
average score of those offered admission last year.
Laura Austin, a
senior at the Liberal Arts and Science Academy in Austin, Texas who
received an offer of admission Friday, said she is grateful for the
flexibility the University’s early action plan provides.
“Hearing
back from U.Va. and knowing that I’ve been accepted is fantastic … [but]
I can also keep my options open, so I can evaluate all the different
aspects of the colleges and take the financial packages into
consideration,” Austin said. In April “I will have more information that
I can decide from, and I think I’ll make a more informed decision — a
decision that I’ll be really happy with.”